The Little Ducklings' Blog

Age UK London recently heard from Linda Northfield the Office Manager at Ducklings nursery in St Margarets, in Leeds. Linda told us such a lovely story that we couldn't resist adding it to our blog pages.

It is a wonderful example of an intergenerational collaboration that could be easily duplicated anywhere across the UK. Supporting an Age-Friendly London includes supporting schemes where young and older people can join together within a community and this is a brilliant example. 

A chance meeting involving a dustbin lid being delivered to the wrong address sparked a special, intergenerational friendship between our nursery, Ducklings at St Margaret’s, Horsforth, Leeds, and Calverlands Day Centre, run by Leeds City Council.  

I chatted with Neil Richardson, Senior Support Worker, and we both talked about who we were and what we do.

Calverlands is a safe space that supports older people, people who are frail and people with dementia. The centre delivers many valuable services, one to one support, opportunities to access a range of community resources and group activities within, and outside of the centre.  

I informed him that I was the manager of a charity, not for profit nursery providing quality care and education for children aged 2-4 years, and that connecting to our local community was a huge and important part of our culture. We agreed that it would be wonderful to collaborate together.  

I had a meeting with Neil and his colleague, Sarah Waldron, part of the operational team, and we discussed relevant risk assessments, what music, songs and exercises interest and motivate both groups, and our aims for the sessions.  We arranged a date to visit with a group of three of our nursery children, myself and one of our team members.  Ducklings at St Margaret’s is only a three-minute walk away, so, our trolley packed with many exciting resources - aptly named our ‘fun bus’ - we were ready to get started.  

Wake-Up Shake-Up is a daily part of our morning nursery routine, and we have incorporated and adapted some of our dances and songs into our sessions at Calverlands.  As we repeat these during each visit, the group have come to know and love them.  We also include familiar action rhymes such as, ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’ and ‘Hokey Cokey’ which the members are very familiar with and actively participate whilst sitting in their chairs.  Our children demonstrate the actions, radiating joyous energy, whilst encouraging everyone to join in with the fun.  The atmosphere is marvellous as we all clap and stomp in unison.  

It is magical to see the Calverlands group burst into song with beaming smiles, as they recognise familiar pop songs, their favourites being from the 1970’s and 1980’s.

It is so evident that music and movement is uplifting for all, a shared happiness, and so beneficial for everyone’s health and wellbeing.  

Our children are responsible for handing out shakers, ribbons, hoops and batons for everyone to wave, shimmy and shake, as our children take centre stage to lead the group.  

We also include developmental movement style activities using enormous balloons, feathers, lycra squares and a giant scrunchie.  We work in two teams, bouncing a balloon from one lycra square to another, stretching, pushing and pulling, requiring coordination, visual tracking and an abundance of physical skills such as jumping and twisting.  When we use the balloon and lycra we all have a shared focus on the same object, working together to the beat of the music.  It is a popular activity which is requested at every visit.  

Our children also take turns to blow bubbles, and we all have lots of fun popping them.  Our final activity is to cool down with our glimmering disco ball lights, parachute and soothing music.  The children calmly gather underneath as we join everyone from Calverlands to waft the parachute gently, creating a blissful, relaxing atmosphere.

We have moments for discussion, enabling quality interactions with one another, giving opportunities for our children to develop their speech and language skills and socialise with older people.  We recognise that not all children have elderly relatives, or elderly relatives nearby, and vice versa, so these delightful engagements work well for everyone.

We are so pleased to be able to extend our community links and so proud of our children for showing so much kindness, respect, patience and empathy.  

We also visit a local residential home, and together we join in music and movement activities, mark make together to different pieces of music, seasonal craft activities and more recently performed Nativity plays.  

Neil Richardson, Senior Support Worker, commented, “The children and staff from Ducklings have made such a positive impact to all of us.  Our carers find their visits an invaluable resource, coming into our service and bringing enlightenment, and brightening everyone’s day.  The sessions help our members reminisce, bringing a calming effect, and joy and fulfilment to all.  We feel that our group sessions are growing really well.”

If any setting is considering making links, reach out and give it a try, it is simply lovely and extremely rewarding.  The learning possibilities are endless when sharing a special partnership with older people.

Sue Hutchinson - Manager

Ducklings St Margarets